I suspect I wasn’t always a grinch at the holidays. (Maybe I was; I do have a reputation among my family for being cranky, but I think that’s an everyday thing, not just around Christmas.) Let’s travel back in time to when I was a kid, when we’d celebrate the holidays on the farm.
Decorating the house was always something we girls did together—Dad was a farmer, after all, and had to work a lot. So Mom, my sister Kim, and I would climb up in the attic, sort through the boxes of old baby clothes (really, Mom, I think it’s safe to toss those now) and magazines (ditto those, Mom) until we found the one we needed. Marked “Xmas” with a Sharpie and held together with dusty masking tape, this was our box of holiday cheer.
If you haven’t gotten a sense of this yet, my mother is not one to throw things out. A construction-paper Santa face with cotton balls glued on for the beard that Kim made in nursery school? That can go on the window in the kitchen! A wreath made out of Play-Doh and toothpicks that looks nothing like a wreath and very much like a mutated hedgehog? Perfect for the front door! With our house now properly festooned in “kindergarten tag sale” décor, we were ready to go get a tree.
Dad had planted some Christmas spruces out in the back—the way, way back, as this was a farm with lots of land—so getting a tree should’ve been fairly easy. Hop in the truck with a chainsaw, pick one out, and haul it up the driveway, right? Not so much. First off, everyone had to go. It didn’t matter if you were deathly ill or unwilling to leave the house in -20 degree weather or that the truck really sat three, not four. We all had to go or face my mother’s wrath, something we’ve tried to avoid most of our lives. So we’d pile in, me with Kim on my lap (her bony butt digging into my thighs are a painful memory to this day) and drive out back over rugged terrain. Kim and I would shiver, tears frozen to our face, as Mom would pick out a tree, then Dad would say, “Too tall. What about this one?” to which Mom would reply, “Not full enough.” What should’ve taken ten minutes often took three hours, a family excursion in which the only input Kim and I had was to occasionally comment, “Mom, I think Kim has hypothermia. She might be passing out . . . she’s down . . . Mom!”
Once our tree was selected and hauled back to the house, out came the ornaments. Again, anything we’d ever made in grade school was carefully wrapped and saved, so you never knew what would come out of the ornament box: a Styrofoam ball with a shoelace glued to it; Popsicle sticks colored with markers and nail polish. Our ornaments were hideous and tacky. Makes me a bit misty-eyed remembering them now, I’ll admit, but I’m just a sentimental fool when it comes to Elmer’s glue and felt scraps.
Once everything was up, decorated, wrapped, and ready to go, the waiting started. And the worrying. I wasn’t always the best kid. One time, I threw a tap shoe at my sister. Another time, I swiped a can of rubber cement from my third-grade classroom and made a giant rubber cement ball. Would Santa forgive me these egregious errors in judgement and bring me a gift? Or would I be looking at a lump of coal come Christmas morn? (“Do you know what the price of coal per short ton is these days?” Dad would say. “We should all be so lucky to get coal in our stockings!”) I’d toss and turn Christmas Eve, practicing my “I’m not bothered that Kim got all the cool gifts and all I have is this combustible rock that Dad wants to sell on the black market” face. Eventually, I’d pass out from exhaustion.
Christmas morning, I’d wake up early, creep down to Kim’s room, and fall asleep again in her bed. We weren’t allowed to wake up Mom before six or seven, and Dad would be out milking, so it seemed like the thing to do. Eventually, we’d rouse our mother, who would get a cup of coffee, say “Merry Christmas!” in a sing-song voice, and sit at the kitchen table to wait for Dad to finish his morning chores. Though the wait was agonizing, it wasn’t all bad—Mom was okay with letting us eat popcorn balls and cookies while we sat.
There was nothing sweeter than the sound of Dad’s work boots coming up the back stairs those mornings. Usually after having milked cows and fed heifers for three hours, Dad would want to clean up a bit, but I don’t think we let him do much more than run his hands under cold water for 3.3 seconds before we pestered him into the living room. I had to know: did Santa come? Or was my rubber-cement ball too great a sin to forgive?
Kim and I unfolded the accordion-style living room door. There, on the table, was a Hot Wheels race track for her, and . . . what was that? Could it be? A Strawberry Shortcake snail cart, complete with Huckleberry Pie?
Thank you, Santa. Thank you for still loving me despite my imperfections. And thank you, Mom and Dad, for making a grinchy, cranky kid feel pretty darn special every Christmas.
I am glad we have a fake tree now, though.
Decorating the house was always something we girls did together—Dad was a farmer, after all, and had to work a lot. So Mom, my sister Kim, and I would climb up in the attic, sort through the boxes of old baby clothes (really, Mom, I think it’s safe to toss those now) and magazines (ditto those, Mom) until we found the one we needed. Marked “Xmas” with a Sharpie and held together with dusty masking tape, this was our box of holiday cheer.
If you haven’t gotten a sense of this yet, my mother is not one to throw things out. A construction-paper Santa face with cotton balls glued on for the beard that Kim made in nursery school? That can go on the window in the kitchen! A wreath made out of Play-Doh and toothpicks that looks nothing like a wreath and very much like a mutated hedgehog? Perfect for the front door! With our house now properly festooned in “kindergarten tag sale” décor, we were ready to go get a tree.
Dad had planted some Christmas spruces out in the back—the way, way back, as this was a farm with lots of land—so getting a tree should’ve been fairly easy. Hop in the truck with a chainsaw, pick one out, and haul it up the driveway, right? Not so much. First off, everyone had to go. It didn’t matter if you were deathly ill or unwilling to leave the house in -20 degree weather or that the truck really sat three, not four. We all had to go or face my mother’s wrath, something we’ve tried to avoid most of our lives. So we’d pile in, me with Kim on my lap (her bony butt digging into my thighs are a painful memory to this day) and drive out back over rugged terrain. Kim and I would shiver, tears frozen to our face, as Mom would pick out a tree, then Dad would say, “Too tall. What about this one?” to which Mom would reply, “Not full enough.” What should’ve taken ten minutes often took three hours, a family excursion in which the only input Kim and I had was to occasionally comment, “Mom, I think Kim has hypothermia. She might be passing out . . . she’s down . . . Mom!”
Once our tree was selected and hauled back to the house, out came the ornaments. Again, anything we’d ever made in grade school was carefully wrapped and saved, so you never knew what would come out of the ornament box: a Styrofoam ball with a shoelace glued to it; Popsicle sticks colored with markers and nail polish. Our ornaments were hideous and tacky. Makes me a bit misty-eyed remembering them now, I’ll admit, but I’m just a sentimental fool when it comes to Elmer’s glue and felt scraps.
Once everything was up, decorated, wrapped, and ready to go, the waiting started. And the worrying. I wasn’t always the best kid. One time, I threw a tap shoe at my sister. Another time, I swiped a can of rubber cement from my third-grade classroom and made a giant rubber cement ball. Would Santa forgive me these egregious errors in judgement and bring me a gift? Or would I be looking at a lump of coal come Christmas morn? (“Do you know what the price of coal per short ton is these days?” Dad would say. “We should all be so lucky to get coal in our stockings!”) I’d toss and turn Christmas Eve, practicing my “I’m not bothered that Kim got all the cool gifts and all I have is this combustible rock that Dad wants to sell on the black market” face. Eventually, I’d pass out from exhaustion.
Christmas morning, I’d wake up early, creep down to Kim’s room, and fall asleep again in her bed. We weren’t allowed to wake up Mom before six or seven, and Dad would be out milking, so it seemed like the thing to do. Eventually, we’d rouse our mother, who would get a cup of coffee, say “Merry Christmas!” in a sing-song voice, and sit at the kitchen table to wait for Dad to finish his morning chores. Though the wait was agonizing, it wasn’t all bad—Mom was okay with letting us eat popcorn balls and cookies while we sat.
There was nothing sweeter than the sound of Dad’s work boots coming up the back stairs those mornings. Usually after having milked cows and fed heifers for three hours, Dad would want to clean up a bit, but I don’t think we let him do much more than run his hands under cold water for 3.3 seconds before we pestered him into the living room. I had to know: did Santa come? Or was my rubber-cement ball too great a sin to forgive?
Kim and I unfolded the accordion-style living room door. There, on the table, was a Hot Wheels race track for her, and . . . what was that? Could it be? A Strawberry Shortcake snail cart, complete with Huckleberry Pie?
Thank you, Santa. Thank you for still loving me despite my imperfections. And thank you, Mom and Dad, for making a grinchy, cranky kid feel pretty darn special every Christmas.
I am glad we have a fake tree now, though.
Also, we were *very* cool.
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